With the arrival of 1,400 New Zealand troops in Apia at the beginning of World War I, the government of Samoa was transformed peacefully from a German -protectorate- to a New Zealand military administration. The New Zealand administrator, Colonel Robert Logan, who now found himself in charge of not just hundreds of bored New Zealand troops, but an entire country and its colonial apparatus was, however, completely out of his depth. This is borne out by ensuing events, all documented in detail by Karl Hanssen, manager of the large DHPG German copra production company. Hanssen s complete diaries...

Karl Hanssen's memoirs provide an invaluable outsider's view of life in New Zealand prisons and a unique perspective on German Samoa under New Zealand occupation. In October 1915, Hanssen, manager of the DHPG, a large German copra production company, was sent from Samoa to New Zealand to serve a six-month sentence imposed by a New Zealand military court for bypassing war censorship regulations. He served his sentence in a number of prisons in New Zealand, including two months in the high-security prison, Mt Eden.
Hanssen's memoirs - in English translation and in the original German - are...